Co-resistance necessitating use of less effective or relatively toxic reserve antibiotics (aminoglycosides, tigecycline and colistin/polymyxin B) may worsen survival. We investigated difficult-to-treat resistance (DTR) in gram-negative bloodstream infections (GNBSIs) defined by absence of susceptibility to all first-line agents (carbapenems, beta-lactams and fluoroquinolones (FQ) using a large clinical database of US hospitals. We found that survival in antimicrobial-resistant GNBSI is highly contingent on presence of active first-line option(s); DTR limits treatment options to reserve agents, including aminoglycosides, which are far from universally active. DTR remained infrequent (1%) among GNBSI, but occurred at half of the hospitals examined and across all US regions. This work has been presented at the Annual Meeting for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, in New Orleans, LA in October 2016. A manuscript on this work is being submitted for consideration at an infectious diseases journal.